Tag Archives: Happiness

Health, Psychology, Research, Science

Positive Psychology: Happiness

WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

ONE of the criticisms often levelled at positive psychology is that it’s all about the “big H”: happiness. Some may argue that happiness is a frivolous topic and certainly not one worthy of serious scientific endeavour. Yet, when you start digging deeper, it becomes clear that happiness is not at all straightforward. In fact, it’s a pretty complex concept. This article explores some of the components of happiness (or well-being as it’s often called), how they’re measured and why they matter.

. Previously About ‘Positive Psychology’

Probably the simplest way to get a handle on happiness is to divide it initially into two basic components:

. Hedonic well-being

. Eudaimonic well-being

The distinction between these two aspects of happiness dates to the ancient Greek philosophers Aristippus (c. 435–356 BCE), who championed hedonism, and Aristotle (384–322 BCE), who advocated eudaimonism.

According to Aristippus, the goal of life is to maximise pleasure and minimise displeasure or pain. In positive psychology hedonic well-being is often used to refer to the happiness you get from feeling pleasure in the moment; it is the variety of happiness which usually springs to mind when you’re asked what happiness is. It is, though, typically short-lived. We must keep topping up our reserves in order to maintain its effects. One of the problems with defining happiness solely in terms of sensory pleasure is that, paradoxically, some human desires, even if they are pleasure-producing in the short term, are not good for you in the long term.

And what about eudaimonic well-being? If happiness can ever have a serious side, this is certainly it. As suggested, some people believe that pleasure on its own isn’t sufficient to describe the totality of human well-being. According to Aristotle, merely pursuing pleasure is vulgar; he advocated eudaimonism because he believed that true happiness is found in doing what is worth doing, not in just having a good time. Eudaimonic well-being is a broad term used by positive psychologists to refer to the happiness we gain from having meaning and purpose in our lives, fulfilling our potential and feeling that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

But even eudaimonic well-being is not problem-free. Some psychologists dislike its moral overtones; they argue that it isn’t psychology’s job to prescribe what is good for people. And, as a matter of fact, eudaimonic well-being may not provide any pleasurable feelings at all: it may involve considerable personal hardship and effort over the longer term. Yet, it is suggested that eudaimonia leads to greater life satisfaction than pure pleasure alone (Huta, V., Park, N., Peterson, C. & Seligman, M. [2003]).

In practice, positive psychologists do not agree on the definition of eudaimonic well-being – terms which include “self-actualisation”, “personal expressiveness”, “meaning”, “personal growth”, and “engagement and flow”. Nor do they agree on how it should be measured, and often the term eudaimonic well-being is used as a catch-all for any type of happiness that isn’t hedonic. But even if we’re not yet sure how to define eudaimonic well-being, most people would acknowledge that there’s more to true happiness than a game or round of 9-hole golf at the weekend. Psychology research concurs with this: a recent study of over 13,000 people suggests that pursuing engagement or meaning is more strongly related to well-being than pursuing pleasure (Schueller, S. M., & Seligman, M. P. [2010]).

Another area of disagreement for positive psychologists is whether happiness is a subjective or an objective phenomenon. Some definitions of eudaimonic well-being suggest that there is an objective standard against which people’s lives can be judged. On the other hand, there are psychologists who insist that happiness is a subjective phenomenon. They argue that it can only be measured by asking people to rate their own happiness. This leads us to another definition of happiness often used in positive psychology – Subjective Well-Being (SWB) – which is expressed in the following formula:

Satisfaction with Life + Positive Emotion – Negative Emotion

In simple terms this means that subjective happiness consists of three elements, one cognitive (or evaluative) and two affective.

Using Subjective Well-Being as the measure suggests that to increase our level of happiness overall, we should focus on minimising our negative mood and maximising our life satisfaction and positive mood.

. A positive psychology model of well-being

In his most recent book, Flourish, Martin Seligman, one of the founding fathers of the positive psychology movement, describes his new theory of well-being. His model (PERMA), which consists of five separate elements, draws on aspects of both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being:

P (Positive emotion) is exactly what it says – the experience of positive mood and feelings which are uplifting. Psychologists use various types of questionnaire which can be used to measure positive (and negative) emotional states.

E (Engagement) or ‘flow’ as it’s often called, refers to the well-being you get from being totally absorbed in the task in hand, so much so that you lose track of time and feel completely at one with what you’re doing. When sports people talk about “being in the zone”, they’re referring to their experience of flow. Flow is usually measured by asking people to reflect back on their day and record flow experiences or by having them carry an electronic beeper which randomly prompts them to think about and record what they’re doing at that moment in time.

R (Relationships) are included in Seligman’s model because research suggests that good, caring and supportive interpersonal connections are essential to your well-being at any age in life.

M (Meaning) is important because it provides both a stable foundation and a sense of direction in life. Pursuing meaningful activities has been found to be more strongly related to happiness than pursuing pleasurable ones. There are many different measures of meaning, although it’s still a relatively under-researched area. The Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (SoMe) measures 26 different sources, including self-transcendence (such as spirituality), self-actualisation (such as challenge and knowledge), order (such as tradition and holding on to values), and well-being and caring for others (such as community and love).

A (Accomplishment) is the latest psychological component in Seligman’s well-being model. It’s another broad category which includes everything from achievement, success and mastery at the highest level possible to progress towards goals and competence.

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Arts, Literature, Philosophy

(Philosophy): Aristotle’s teaching of ‘happiness’

HAPPINESS

Aristotle (384–322 BC): ‘Happiness is the highest good, being a realisation and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it.’

The term “polymath” is often used in a somewhat hyperbolic sense to describe a significant figure who excels in several different disciplines. In modern parlance, for example, a sportsperson who writes a newspaper column, has an interest in current affairs and wins a televised ballroom-dancing competition is often erroneously described as being a polymath.

The sheer range and depth of Aristotle’s contribution to Western philosophy cannot be underestimated. Aristotle wrote on subjects as varied as physics, metaphysics, poetry, theatre, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology, while still finding the time to study under Plato, found his own academy – the Lyceum – and act as a private tutor to the young Alexander the Great. Aristotle’s main contribution to philosophy concerns his work on the study of formal logic, collected together in a series of texts known as The Organon, and the use of “syllogisms” in deductive reasoning. In basic terms, a syllogism is a method for arriving at a conclusion through constructing a three-step series of premises, usually a major premise, A, followed by a minor premise, B, via which it is possible to deduce a proposition, C.

    For example:
    Major premise: All men are mortal.
    Minor premise: Socrates is a man.
    Conclusion/proposition: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

In order for step C to be a viable logical proposition, step A and step B must be true.

Aristotle is often credited with “inventing” the form, although in truth he was probably just one of the first people to explore formal logic in this manner, especially the way in which logic must proceed to avoid fallacies and false knowledge. Aristotle’s systematic approach to all of the disciplines to which he turned his enquiring mind displayed a love of classification and definition, and it is possible that where words did not exist for a philosophical phenomenon, Aristotle simply made them up.

The quote at the beginning of this article about “happiness is the highest good” comes from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, a series of ten scrolls believed to be based on notes taken from his lectures at the Lyceum. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle addresses the question of what constitutes a good and virtuous life. Aristotle equates the concept of happiness with the Greek word eudaimonia, although this is not happiness in an abstract or hedonistic sense, but rather “excellence” and “well-being”. To live well, then, is to aim at doing good or the best one can, for every human activity has an outcome or cause, the good at which it aims to achieve. If humans strive to be happy, the highest good should be the aim of all actions, not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.

In this regard, Aristotle saw the pursuit of happiness as “being a realisation and perfect practice of virtue”, which could be achieved by applying reason and intellect to control one’s desires. In his view, the satisfaction of desires and the acquisition of material goods are less important than the achievement of virtue. A happy person will apply conformity and moderation to achieve a natural and appropriate balance between reason and desire, as virtue itself should be its own reward. True happiness can therefore be attained only through the cultivation of the virtues that make a human life complete. Aristotle also pointed out that the exercise of perfect virtue should be consistent throughout a person’s life: “To be happy takes a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring.”

The Nicomachean Ethics is widely considered to have had a profound effect on the development of Christian theology in the Middle Ages, largely through the work of Thomas Aquinas, who produced several important studies of Aristotle that synthesised his ideas with doctrines concerning cardinal virtues. Similarly, Aristotle’s works also had an important role to play in early Islamic philosophy, where Aristotle was revered as “The First Teacher”.

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Arts, History, Literature, Philosophy

(Philosophy): Plato on ‘play’

HAPPINESS

Plato (427–347 BC): ‘You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.’

THE authorship of this quote, often attributed to Plato, remains controversial, as it does not appear in any of the great Greek philosopher’s surviving works. Part of the issue centres on the fact that on the surface, the promotion of ‘play’ as being more indicative of truth than conversation flies in the face of the dialectic method that Plato held so dear. For Plato and Socrates, truth was the highest ideal and could only be arrived at through the exchange of rational and reasoned arguments. The purpose of the dialectic method of reasoning is the resolution of disagreement through discussion, with the aim of acquiring knowledge and establishing fact through the examination of assumptions.

Indeed, the quote seems to imply that people show their true selves more readily while playing than while conversing. It is certainly true that natural reticence and guardedness drops when one is engaged in pleasurable pursuits. However, the reverse could also be true, as competitiveness in sport and games can drive human beings to behave extremely irrationally, exhibiting passions and motivations that may not be readily discernible in everyday situations. Plato also seems to be saying that people do not always do what they say or, to use a well-worn commonplace, ‘practice what they preach’.

Perhaps, though, Plato (assuming, for the sake of argument, the quote is derived from him) is using the term ‘play’ to describe indulging the human imagination? Children play naturally from an early age and learn about the world and the society around them through imaginative play and imitation, while their understanding of play is uninhibited by adult values and constructs. One of the greatest attributes of play is the opportunity it affords for learning to live without knowing. Human beings learn through trial and error, and play is a non-threatening way to cope with new learning while still retaining self-esteem. In adulthood, human beings, encumbered with other concerns, forget how to play or indulge their imagination for its own sake. So perhaps Plato is here recommending we rediscover the pure, uncorrupted sense of the self that only play can release and reflect. This doesn’t solve the contradiction evident in the quote’s seeming rejection of the dialectical method, but is a comforting idea nonetheless.

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